NATURE Poem: The Ultimate Teacher, by Jacob Roberts

The sea is the ultimate teacher within our reach

Even if I dedicated my entire life to a sober,
disciplined study of consciousness, meaning,
and fulfillment—I could barely map 10%
of the domain. I want

to be a shark.

I want to be an angler fish.
I want to be a thermal vent,
nourishing shrimp and other life so far
removed from the sun’s influence
that photosynthesis could stop
and my brood and I would go on.
I want to be the center of the Earth.

I want to sleep so hot
and so intensely that
the planet only survives
by my good graces.

I want to be silt, salt, and sand. Foamy
and only a strange preview of a complexity
that presents innocuous
while capable of crushing
every machine humanity
has ever manufactured
just by the nature
of my being. I’m embarrassed

to be a person.

I want to cultivate love, even
for the parts of me
who want to cultivate resentment.

I have had a pretty great life,
even if the great parts
have been unexpected.

I love my brain, my heart, my lungs, and my spinal column
despite the trouble
they can sometimes cause. But I am ready

to let them go when the time comes.

There is a committee inside the body
and it’s unclear when
the members are influencing me.

I want to accept all the truth
and wisdom from every continent
intelligence surmounts every boundary
just as every body is designed
to handle death.

I want to look
angry and dangerous
without realizing
anyone is looking. I want
my nature
to be
crash and nurture
absorb, digest
and cultivate,
swallow and breed.

I want to be a black hole.
I want to be the hazy expanse
of a new star. I want to be
the burnt-out sun.

I want to be two galaxies
entangled, following gravity’s logic,
indifferent to the consequences, indifferent
to the causes. I want to be the white-hot star
before it collapses and the new
universe

on the other side of the event horizon. I want to be the fabric of time,
the dark matter, the anti-matter, and the dimensions themselves.

The heat death. The absences.
The purpose, stripped of its illusions. The truth
that is only true while it is stuck in your teeth,
before some carnivore
ejects it, along with fish parts, waste,
and digestive enzymes
after it has vibrated

with the first atoms before light,
before time, before the dust
got the idea to become rocks
before vapor became drops.

The brain is doing its own thing.
Projecting images within folds,
guessing at where the dressing ends,
nurturing the wound, neglecting the gauze.

The brain has its own time.
You can’t learn kung fu in an instant
but the brain will take an instance
where you missed the hint
and shove it into your face for as long as you live.

Your brain is not your own.
You are a growth protruding
from reality’s constant experimentation on itself.
You’re lucky you’ve ever been
happy once. You’re lucky you were born
with enough good fortune that you made it
to 13 before your first real suicidal inclination.

Your family is lucky you barely had any idea
how to act on your urges. Your family is lucky
you didn’t have the internet back then.

Your brain is like if the universe is paying
a small amount of attention
to an infinitesimal droplet
of its own, glowing life
while it’s on the phone,
watching a YouTube video,
and setting some of itself on fire.

Your brain knows what you should say,
but only in its own, sad little theater.

And even then, it could be wrong.

It is a supremely imperfect
computational machine

stuck in the gums
of an eldritch creature swimming
in waters deep enough to crush
a rhinoceros skull.